Am I right? Or, am I right?

This can make it hard to build an audience over the long haul. Here’s one way to handle it: take nothing personally. Remember that every comment, every review, and everything other people say has more to do with their perspective and emotional state than it does you.

This is where your observation skills as a writer can come in handy.

Whenever someone says something you don’t like or makes a negative or critical observation, examine it like a doctor does a patient. See if it’s true and make a correction, if needed. But do so without letting it affect your self-worth or identity.

Nobody said this was easy. It’s not. But it’s necessary if you are going to keep your sanity and stay emotionally healthy.

Today’s Challenge: Ask yourself if it’s hard or easy to avoid taking things personally. Why or why not?

The post Are You Taking Things Personally? appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.

“Death of a Salesman” tells the story of the last 24 hours in the life of Willy Loman, a salesman who never quite achieves the success he always dreamed of. He has a faithful yet disappointed wife and two sons who are equally as lost as he is.

By the end of the play, you come to understand Willy’s main downfall: he is unable to truly be himself. He has spent his whole career trying to manufacture a winning personality and measuring his success by how much money he makes.

It’s tempting to criticize Willy Loman for being misguided and superficial. But this character isn’t just confined to the stage. The ghost of Willy Loman is alive and well in each one of us.

Every day, you are tempted to play by other people’s rules and conform to their definitions of success. That’s why you need the courage to carve out your own identity as a writer.

And isn’t that one of the defining qualities of a writer, anyway? You have a voice that is unique, and you must have the courage to share it.

The actress Lily Tomlin once said, “I always wanted to be somebody. Now I realize I should’ve been more specific.”

Of course, you want to be somebody. We all do. But you’re not just somebody or anybody. There is only one person who can be uniquely you… and that’s YOU.

Don’t settle for the death of a salesman. That’s a sad, depressing story. Instead, embrace the life of a writer, sharing your own story so you can, in turn, give life to others.

Today’s Challenge: Get a copy of “The Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller. You can find copies of the stage play online or in used bookstores. If you’ve never read it, you might be surprised at how much of yourself you see in Willy Loman… and you’ll be motivated to strive for something different in your life.

The post The Courage to Share Your Voice appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.

We don’t just write to express what we think. We write in order to discover what we think.

For many writers, it goes even deeper than that. It’s an itch they keep on scratching, but it never seems to quite go away. This itch is what we call a life theme. It’s a statement or an idea that ties your body of work together.

This isn’t true for all writers. But for most, it is. They write because there is a singular theme that resonates from their soul. It’s a golden thread that ties it all together.

This was true of Maya Angelou. She said, “In all my work what I try to say is that as human beings we are more alike than we are unalike.” That was her golden thread.

Is there a theme or idea that you keep coming back to? Something you’re trying to say, but you never quite feel you get it right?

That feeling of not getting it quite right is not an indication that you’re inadequate. It’s a sign that you still have more to say.

Don’t be afraid of your golden thread. In fact, lean into it. The more you do, the more your writing will resonate with people because it represents the truth of who you are and how you see the world.

And if you have been true to your golden thread, someday you’ll be able to look back on your body of work and see how that golden thread has been woven into a stunning tapestry.

Today’s Challenge: Write down a few ideas of what your golden thread as a writer might be. Share it with a couple of friends to see if they agree.

The post The Golden Thread Running Through Your Writing appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.

As they say, there is nothing new under the sun. When you look at the millions of books, blogs, podcasts, and magazine articles that have been created, what could you possibly say that is unique?

The answer is simple. What makes your writing unique is not that you’re writing about something new. It’s the fact that it’s you who is writing it. You are the unique factor in the equation.

Unique means “one of a kind.” And there is only one of you in the world.

Your unique combination of skills, experience, and viewpoint is what makes your writing worth reading. You might be writing about the same things as a hundred other people, but they’re not saying it in the way you say it.

So, how does this inform your writing? The novelist Barbara Kingsolver has the answer. She said, “Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.”

Well, as it turns out, the only thing you have to offer is also the best thing you have to offer. There will only ever be one of you in the world. There is only one person who can speak with your voice.

Don’t waste the opportunity to let us hear it.

Today’s Challenge: Ask yourself if you’re holding back because you mistakenly believe you don’t have anything unique to share. Be honest.

The post You Only Have One Thing to Offer appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.

One of them is knowledge. It seems like we should know what we are getting ourselves into, right? Who respects a writer who seems aloof and doesn’t know what’s going on?

Another quality we prize is humility. Surely we don’t want to become one of those writers who have a pretty high opinion of themselves, right?

There is some truth in that. But there is also something to be said for going ahead and doing the work even though we don’t have it all figured out. There is something to be said for having a pretty good amount of confidence in who we are and what we have to say.

It’s a balance, to be sure. But so many writers are timid and unsure that perhaps a good old-fashioned attitude of “I don’t know and I don’t care” would do us some good now and then.

Or as Steven Pressfield wrote in his fantastic little book, Do the Work: “Ignorance and arrogance are the artist and entrepreneur’s indispensable allies. She must be clueless enough to have no idea how difficult her enterprise is going to be—and cocky enough to believe she can pull it off anyway.”

It’s OK not to have everything figured out. It’s OK to be confident and courageous. You’re good enough. You’re smart enough. And if you stick with it, you’re gonna make it.

The post I Don’t Know and I Don’t Care appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.

Opportunities are wonderful! You can write for more outlets or reach more readers with your own writing. With this expanded influence and connection also comes the need the limit your activities to the few things that produce the most results.

It’s hard to run a YouTube channel, host a podcast, write books, maintain a blog or newsletter, speak at conferences, and do all the other things you see influencers doing… unless it’s your full-time job and you have a staff. You need to pick and choose what to focus on.

The best filter is to focus on those activities that you enjoy, and that you will do consistently. You can grow a platform and writing career in many different ways. But as you grow in your career, you will have more options, and you will need to prune the ones that don’t serve your vision and direction.

As they say, you can be whatever you want, but you can’t be everything. Focus on just a few activities that will get you the biggest results in your writing life.

Pruning is not easy. At times it can be downright painful. But after you have prepared the soil of your mind, and planted and watered the seeds, you must cut back all the dead weight so the growth process can continue.

Question: Are there some activities in your life you should prune so you can focus on the bigger priorities?

The post Pruning: Eliminate A Few Activities appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.

We have a plethora of ways to gain knowledge today, including podcasts, ebooks, audiobooks, video courses, and so much more. But none of these learning sources compare to good old-fashioned books. When you engage with a great book, you enter into a sustained dialogue with the author. You take a journey you cannot get any other way.

So make reading books a habit. The mode doesn’t matter as much as the fact that you are reading them. Ebooks, print books, audiobooks—they all lead to the same result.

Reading will help you connect the dots, spur new ideas, fill in the gaps in your knowledge, and inspire you to keep writing. Aside from consistent writing, reading is the habit that will nourish and expand your seeds of ideas into a bountiful harvest later on.

Question: Are you making time to read each day?

The post Watering: Read Books for Nourishment appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.

This is hard to hear because we are deluded into believing we see things as they are. We assume we can see ourselves and everyone else clearly. We trust that our perceptions about our level of talent, and other people’s talent, are pretty much on target.

But that’s almost never the case. In truth, we tend to underestimate our own potential, while overestimating everyone else’s. In other words, we think everyone else deserves success while we don’t.

Not everyone sees the world this way, but most writers do. When we see other people succeed, we believe they deserved it more or are probably more talented than we are. But the reality is that they probably just worked harder, had better connections, or were more creative with their marketing.

So the question is: Why not you? Why shouldn’t you also get to experience success? Is there any reason you shouldn’t be just as successful as the next person?

They are no more deserving than you are. In fact, none of us really deserves anything in this life. We all start with nothing, and we will exit this life not being able to carry anything with us into the next realm.

Success in your writing doesn’t have anything to do with what anyone deserves or doesn’t deserve. Success comes as a result of actions you take consistently over time.

Yes, some people are more connected, some have more resources, and so forth. But all that is irrelevant because you have the same opportunities.

So don’t ask, “Why them?” Instead, ask “Why not me?” Success doesn’t come to those who deserve it. It comes to those who work for it.

Question: Do you believe you deserve to be just as successful as the next person? If not, what’s keeping you from that belief?

Today’s episode is sponsored by the Book Marketing Mastery course. Use the code “DailyWriter” to get 10% off.

The post Why Not You? appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.

The ones who are competing against everyone else take running very seriously. They like to set records and get the glory of being known as a winner. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that.

The runners competing against themselves aren’t worried about anyone else’s time. They just want to run their own race and hopefully beat their previous record. At the very least, they want to finish the race, which is a phenomenal achievement in itself since the vast majority of people never participate in a race.

This happened to me recently when I ran a 10k race. I wasn’t competing against anyone else. I went at my own pace, which happened to be pretty slow. But I still finished the race!

Many writers look at the creative journey as one where they are competing against everyone else. They worry too much about rankings, comparisons, and what everyone else thinks of them.

Writing is about running your own race. Are you getting better over time? Are you consistently publishing your work? Are you leaning more and more into your own unique voice?

Those are the kinds of metrics that matter most.

The novelist David Morrell, who wrote the bestseller First Blood, said this: “You have to follow your own voice. You have to be yourself when you write. In effect, you have to announce, ‘This is me, this is what I stand for, this is what you get when you read me. I’m doing the best I can—buy me or not—but this is who I am as a writer.’”

The only person you are responsible to become is you. And the only race you need to run is the one against yourself.

Question: Do you get overly distracted by what other writers are doing and forget to run your own race? Be honest.

The post The Only Person You’re Competing Against is You appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.

Writers don’t think about what we do in terms of power. We use words like creativity, craft, platform, audience, and entrepreneurship. But power? It’s a concept that seems a little old-fashioned, if not outright outdated these days.

Power is just influence. When you have power as a writer, you can change people’s minds. You can tell a story that has impact. You can write books, blog posts, articles, or other content to influence other people.

If power as a writer is a good thing, how do you get it? There are many ways, and those ways can include having the right connections or, sometimes. even just getting lucky. But those are external situations that you can’t predict or control.

There is only one surefire way to accumulate power as a writer. Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid’s Tale, said it best: “A word after a word after a word is power.” (By the way, this was the title of a 2019 documentary where she discusses her life and work.)

The meaning of the phrase is pretty obvious: when you put down one word after another, eventually you wind up with something you can share. And when you accumulate those words, and they become books, screenplays, speeches, or other types of shareable content, they can have more power than you can possibly imagine.

As Tears for Fears sang in their 1985 hit song, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” However, not everybody can write, or even wants to write. That’s too bad because they are missing out on an incredible opportunity to use their writing power to influence other people.

But we know better. We know our words have power. So, let’s get out there today and put down not just one word, but a word after a word after a word.

Question: What do you think about the concept of being powerful because of your words? Does it make you comfortable or uncomfortable?

The post A Word After a Word is Power appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.